THE CHURCH LIFEEphesians 5:22-33Series: A Letter of Grace and Life - Part
TenNine Pastor Stephen MuncherianMay 3, 2020

Before we come to Ephesians 5:22-33,
there are two big picture ideas that we need to have
in mind while we look at this passage.

First:As much as we might be tempted to think that
the focus of this passage is about marriage, and even
though this passage teaches some really helpful things
about marriage, the focus of this passage is not about
marriage but about the church.

Second:Where this passage fits into Paul’s letter to
the Ephesians is hugely important for us to keep in
mind in case we might be tempted to think that the
focus of this passage is about marriage and not the
church.Because
ultimately, this passage is an illustration of our
life together as the church.

The verse that comes just before today’s
passage - is the big idea of what Paul’s illustration
is all about.5:21
says:“submitting to one another out of
reverence for Christ.”

Paul began Ephesians by writing about who
we are in Christ because of God’s grace.And Paul has
been opening up to us what that looks like in the real
time of our lives.

We should be living what we say we
believe which is going to look way different than
what’s going on in the world around us.We’re to
live in imitation of God.Living with
God’s kind of love and according to His word and by
His wisdom and how we do that by relying on God - not
us.

One of the results of our living out what
it means to be in Christ, by God’s grace, is that
we’re going to be living in submission to each other
out of reverence for Christ.

Which is easy to say.Tough to do.

Which is why verses 22 to 33 are here.Paul
illustrating what that means and how we can go there
together.

Because as much as we might be tempted to
think that the focus of this passage is about
marriage, and even though this passage teaches some
really helpful things about marriage, the focus of
this passage is not about marriage but about the
church.

The big picture for us of how we submit
to each other out of reverence for Christ.

So with all that in mind, let me read for
us Ephesians 5:22-33:

Wives, submit to your own
husbands, as to the Lord.For the
husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is
the head of the church, his body, and is himself
its Savior.Now
as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should
submit in everything to their husbands.

Husbands, love your wives, as Christ
loved the church and gave himself up for her,
that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her
by the washing of water with the word,
so that he might present the church to himself in
splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such
thing, that she might be holy and without blemish.In the same
way husbands should love their wives as their own
bodies.He
who loves his wife loves himself.

For no one ever hated his own flesh, but
nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the
church, because we are members of his body.“Therefore a
man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to
his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.”

This mystery is profound, and I am saying
that it refers to Christ and the church.However, let
each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the
wife see that she respects her husband.

Let’s unpack Paul’s illustration.

Paul begins with wives: “Wives, submit to your own
husbands.”

The marriage counselor asks the married
couple:“So, what brings you here today?”

Wife:“He takes everything
literally. I can’t stand it.”

Husband:“My truck.”

Let’s be honest, husbands are not always
easily submit-able to.

Submission has to do with who we give
authority to.Who
we respect.Who
we honor.Who
we follow.Who
we submit ourselves to.

The word for submission in the Greek uses
the middle voice.Which is the Greek way of saying it’s
voluntary.A
wife is to willingly submit to her husband.No where
does Paul say that a husband is to demand the
submission of the wife.

The motivation is that the submission is
“as to the Lord.”Meaning that as a wife submits to her husband
she is also submitting to the Lord.

Paul’s reason why wives should submit
comes in verse 23 - “the husband is the head of
the wife.”Which is not what we’d usually hear
coming out of our culture today.

Let’s be clear.Submission
does not mean inferiority.Jesus, God
the Son, is not inferior to God the Father.And yet,
Jesus willingly submits to the will of the Father.

Paul is reaching into the Bible and how
God says that God created men and women - equally in
His image - created them for the roles of husband and
wife and how God has designed all that to work
together.The
God appointed leadership role given to the husband.

By comparison, the husband is the head of
the wife.And
in a similar way Christ is the Head of the Church.The church
which is the Body of Christ that Jesus Himself saved.

Point being - verse 24 - as the church
submits to Christ, so wives should submit in
everything to their husbands.

Everything here being a phrase that’s not
absolute.We
need to read the fine print.A wife
should not submit to her husband in what is against
the will of God - what is sinful and harmful and
abusive.

And yet, submission is not conditioned by
submissable.But
it is based on the wife’s submission to the Lord.

We’re created with differences that make
our God given roles doable and more effective.Differences
that often times make what Paul writes about here to
be difficult for us.

Differences that mess with us because -
even back in the Garden - those differences were
messed up by sin.

Each of us comes into marriage with our
own whims and wants and wounds and fears and we’re
imperfect people messed up by sin and the kind of
trust and openness required by submission in marriage
doesn’t come easy for us.

Wives sometimes have feelings of
insecurity and fear and often respond by trying to
control what’s going on around her.All of that
being an understandable reaction to the actions of her
husband.

Paul didn’t say that a wife submitting to
her husband was easy.

Paul writes that a wife is to submit to
her own husband as to the Lord.

And honestly - even though we may understand the need
and value of submitting to Christ - because we’re
messed up by sin - we struggle with submitting even to
Christ.

What Paul is describing is a quality of
submission that illustrates our voluntary submission
to Christ.

A choice to have faith in the God who is
sovereign and greater and more loving and able to
provide security and is trustable even when a wife
feels her husband is not.

That’s a description of what submission
looks like.Our
choice to honor the Lord by trusting Him with
everything in our lives.

Paul’s example of
that:as Christ loved [“agaped”] the church and gave Himself up for
her…”

That’s “agape” love
in real time.Christ
loving the church.

The word “to give up” in Greek means
being handed over to someone else - especially in some
act of treachery.Judas kisses Jesus and Jesus voluntarily gives
Himself up to be arrested.

Jesus gave up everything for
the Church - by choice.He set aside all of His
Godly attributes - His prerogative to be God - King of
kings and Lord of lords - in charge and the head of it
all.Whatever
respect was due to Him.Whatever submission He could have demanded.

Jesus gave up all that to be born in the humility of
a manger to live and
experience life like we do.Jesus - in the Garden of
Gethsemane - praying with blood sweating from His
pores - looking ahead
to the mockery - the beatings - the crown of
thorns - the nails - His death by crucifixion.

Jesus’ going to the cross in our place.Jesus giving
Himself up to take care of what distanced us from God.Love
demonstrated in real time.

Paul goes on in verse 26 to the purpose
of Christ’s sacrificial “agape” love.

First:That He might sanctify her.[the church - us]

To sanctify has the idea of setting
something apart for God.

Because Jesus gave Himself up we can be
set apart for God.For God’s service.For God’s
glory.

Jesus sanctifies us having cleansed her [the church] by the washing of water - meaning baptism that demonstrates inner
cleansing from sin that comes with our repentance and
God giving us new life in Christ - with the word - meaning the Gospel
that saves us and transforms all of us to be more
useful servants of God.

Jesus sanctifies us so that he might present the church
to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle
or any such thing, that she might be holy and without
blemish.

Hold in mind the image of the splendor of
a bride on her wedding - having spent hours - days -
months in preparation for the moment she stands in
white at the head of the aisle - radiant - in splendor
- presented for marriage.

Paul is fast forwarding to the future day
coming at the end of time when the church - when we
stand before Jesus - as His bride without the spot or
wrinkle - in perfection without the blemish of sin -
in holiness and perfection.In splendor
before God’s creation.

That coming moment which is made possible
because of the sanctifying sacrificial “agape” work of
Christ Jesus on the cross and His continuing work in
our lives.

As a husbands - to sanctify our wives is
an invitation to discover and champion the uniqueness
of our wives - encouraging her and supporting her and
helping her to be all that God has uniquely created
her to be.

As a husband - to sanctify our wives is
to provide for and protect our wives - this incredible
woman that God has blessed us with.To guard her
dignity - her character - her reputation - her
relationship with God.

What Paul’s talking about is a husband
taking spiritual leadership in the marriage.That’s
tough.Uncomfortable.It exposes
us on a deep level.Definitely sacrificial.

That means that as men we need to go deep in our
relationship with God - studying His word - praying -
opening ourselves up to God.How are we
going to encourage our wives in their relationship
with God if we’re not going there ourselves?

Then to share with our wives from what
we’re learning - to open up our hearts and discuss
with our wives - what will encourage them to grow and
become more of who God has created them to be -
sanctified - for His purposes.

It means taking initiative and praying
with our wives.Seeking
God together.Developing
convictions and actions in our marriages based on
prayer and the study of Scripture.

Husbands are to give themselves up for
their wives so that their wives may fulfill the
purposes for which God has created them.

Husbands, that’s our example.How we
should love our wives.Sacrificial headship.Our being
willing to give up everything for our wives.It is a
brutal example because of how far short of that we
fall.

Paul goes on - verse 28:In the same way husbands should love
- agape - their wives as their own bodies.He who loves
his wife loves himself.

A man should love His wife as He loves
Himself.The
word “should” in the Greek is emphatic - compulsive -
an obligation that requires fulfillment.To love our
wives is a compulsion.It’s as integral to our being as loving
ourselves.

Verse 29:For no one ever hated his own flesh, but
nourishes and cherishes it, just as Christ does the
church, because we are members of his body.

To nourish is to do the things necessary
to keep our bodies going:food - sleep
- even exercise.To cherish means to keep warm - put on clothing
- a warm coat on a cold day.Food and
clothing - the basics.

We do that for ourselves.At the very
least because we have this compulsion inside to stay
alive.

But - honestly - for most of us it goes
way beyond that.We’re pretty self-loving.We provide a
whole lot of things for ourselves - creature comforts
and foods that go way beyond mere self-preservation.

Paul is illustrating the Church.Jesus who
nourishes and cherishes us because we are His body.Nourishing
and cherishing isn’t about us.But about
following the example of Jesus and loving our wives.

Verse 31 - Paul quotes from Genesis:“Therefore a man shall leave his father
and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two
shall become one flesh.”

Are we together on the illustration?Leave and
cleave.Leave
what is familiar to us and be exclusively devoted to
our wives because we’re created by God to be one.

“Shall” meaning it’s not optional.It’s obeying
God.Meaning
God is all in with us to make it happen.But we got
to choose to go there with God.

Men - our wives need us to follow the
example of Jesus.

If we will “agape” unconditionally
sacrifice ourselves for our wives they will feel more
relationally secure which will encourage our wives to
honor and respect us more which will grow us closer to
being the one flesh that God desires us to be.

Result being that we are going to grow in
submission to each other out of reverence for Christ.

Verse 32 brings us back to why Paul’s
illustration is here.

Because as much as we might be tempted to
think that the focus of this passage is about
marriage, and even though this passage teaches some
really helpful things about marriage, the focus of
this passage is not about marriage but about the
church.

This mystery is profound, and I am saying
that it refers to Christ and the church.

Paul begins with a profound mystery.A mystery in
Scripture is what God knows and we only get clued into
because God clues us in.

The mystery begins in Genesis.After the
fall - when God pronounces His curse upon the earth -
God speaks to the serpent - to Satan - God says, “I will put enmity between you and
the woman - Eve - and between your offspring - your descendants - and her offspring - her descendants; Heshall bruise you on the head and youshall bruise his heel.”(Genesis 3:15)

There’s going to be warfare between Satan
and His minions and God’s people.But God’s
people will be victorious.(Romans
16:20)How
- we’re not told.It’s a mystery.

God goes on through Scripture - with the
Passover Lamb and the whole Old Covenant sacrificial
system - clues to help us understand the mystery -
glimpses of what He’s doing in history.

Isaiah - inspired by God - Isaiah writes:“Surely he has borne our griefs and
carried our sorrows… He was wounded for our
transgressions…with
his stripes we are healed… the Lord has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.”(Isaiah 53:4-6)

Those are clues.

Ezekiel writes of God’s people [Israel]“And I will give them one heart,
and a new spirit I will put within them.And I will
remove the heart of stone from their flesh and give
them a heart of flesh, that they may walk in my
statutes and keep my rules and obey them.And they
shall be my people, and I will be their God.”(Ezekiel
11:19,20)

More clues.

Joel writing of the day when God delivers
His people - Joel writes, “And it shall come to pass
afterward, that I will pour out my Spirit on all
flesh; your sons and your daughters shall prophesy,
your old men shall dream dreams, and your young men
shall see visions.Even on the male and female servants in those
days I will pour out my Spirit.”(Joel 2:28,29)

There’s a mystery that flows through
Scripture - flows through history - that is so
profound - that when God reveals what He has been
doing - it is jaw dropping - over the top - beyond the
scope of what we can wrap our minds around.

But when we see Jesus - God Himself
dwelling with us - dying for us - the mystery is
revealed.When
we trust Jesus as the Savior - when we experience
Pentecost - the coming of the Spirit - that mystery is
revealed to us - personally.

Jesus described that realization when He
prayed to the Father - concerning the Church, “that they may all be one; just as
you, Father, are in me and I in you, that they also
may be in us” (John 17:21)

The mystery is Christ and the Church.The oneness
of God with His people who are One together in Christ.

Jews and Greeks and Swedes and Russians
and Chinese and Ethiopians - people from every people
group on the planet - from every background and every
strata and layer of society.Broken down
- beat up - messed up and hung up - wounded and
wearied and weighed down - diseased and damaged -
stressed out and anxious - without hope and living in
fear - stumbling in darkness - bound and separated
from God by our sin…

And yet because of Jesus Christ - His
sacrificial “agape” work on the cross - all of us in
Christ sinners saved by God’s grace - one body -
Christ’s body - His church - one in Him.

Called by God to live lives of purpose
and meaning - forgiven and redeemed - to live in
wholeness and fullness of life - being prepared
together to stand in splendor before creation - the
bride of Christ - to live forever in the presence of
God Himself.

Before Christ - with all that He has done
for us - the mystery revealed.What a
privilege to submit to each other.In total
trust of God.Sacrificially
loving each other - giving ourselves up for each other
- as members of one another.

Verse 33:However - meaning don’t lose
touch with this illustration still being a really
important teaching about marriage - let each one of you love his wife as
himself, and let the wife see that she respects
her husband.

Processing all that...

A number of years ago I
was on the Island of Kauai - laying out on the beach -
enjoying just being away from everything.When I
noticed that there were hundreds of little sand crabs
all over the beach.

When the water would go back out - they would
pop out of their holes and go running around looking
for food - each one doing its best to avoid making any
contact with the other one.Then when
the next wave came back in they would rush back into
their holes and wait for the water to go out again.

So often church is like that.Individuals
rushing around trying to get their needs met -
avoiding unnecessary contact - trying to endure the
circumstances of life - waves crashing over us.Where
the emphasis is on what serves me rather than
individual and mutual submission to Jesus.

None of that is part of a healthy
marriage.None
of that is part of a healthy church.

If we move from church to church to
church when our comfort zone gets challenged - how is
God ever suppose to use us to help each other to grow
- to mature - to change - using us in each other’s
lives - to be accountable to each other for the things
He desires to produce in us and through us?

If we’re subjectable only to our selves -
the unholy trinity of me, myself, and I, we’ll never
be the church Jesus desires us to be.How will we
ever prevail against the gates of hell?Let alone
reach the greater Merced metroplex with the Gospel?

One of things that I hope we’re learning
in these days of separation - this viral wave that’s
washed over us - hopefully we’re feeling our need to
be physically together - in worship and prayer and
study and service - together - submitting to each
other - committed to each other - as the body of
Christ.

I can imagine you all sitting out there watching this
in different places around your house.Some of you
could have taken a little extra time getting ready
this morning.

I can imagine you where you’re at.And I can
still see you here.The Nickersons are back over there.The Roses
are over there.Michael
is back there.Karol
and Linda over there near Laura.The
Ramirez’s and Swensons are over here.I can see
all of you.

But you’re not here.You’re where
you are and I’m here.And that’s just wrong.Oneness and
submission doesn’t happen in isolation.And neither
does growth and wholeness and witness to the glory of
God.

As great as watching some great Bible
teacher online or on TV - as great as that is.Or,
worshiping along with some great artist.As great as
that might be.That’s
not God’s design for His church.

Imagine a wedding where no one is
physically where anyone else is.Even the
bride and groom are separated from each other - web
gathering from different locations.That’s just
messed up.

There is something crucial about showing
up.Vows
of commitment made in community.Affirmation
and support coming from community.Presence is
powerful.A
profound tool in God’s hands.

Oneness with the almighty holy God of
creation and the reality of that relationship is a
little hard to get our minds around.But oneness
in marriage is a little easier.It’s more
visible - more a part of where we live our lives.

Marriage - done God’s way - allows us to experience a
oneness that helps us to understand more of what God
desires in our relationship with Him and with each
other.What
life in the Church should be like.

There is so much profound potential in
that for us.A
mystery yet to be revealed as we commit ourselves to
each other what God can do in us and through us.